Things Change When You're Dead
by mimirshead
Summary: One of the perks of being dead he'd said, but the look on his face had been rueful.


In life, Sid had walked with a limp. Slight, but there. An old battle wound that had never quite gone away. One obtained when things went south on a mission when he was twenty three, and they had underestimated the number of enemies. It was rather common with Meisters. Most had some sort of scar deep down that pained them, and kept them up at night.

Since he'd died, things had been strange. Sid didn't walk with a limp anymore. There was no slight sway every time he brought his weight down on his left knee. It was like, he couldn't feel the pain there now. Mira had mentioned it, and he'd told her that it was something Stein had fixed when he was "brought back". One of the perks of being dead he'd said, but the look on his face had been rueful.

She knew he didn't like the way things had gone. It bothered him. People made jokes, and he pretended like it was all okay, but the truth was that he didn't sleep anymore, and when he thought she wasn't looking, he would stand in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, staring at the hole in his forehead where a bullet had met with his brain, and changed everything in a split second.

She wished with all her heart that things had gone differently. He didn't come to bed anymore. He spent most of his nights in Black Star's old room, lying in the tiny bed, staring at the ceiling. She'd chase him in there, curl up around his cold body, and bother him with the sound of her breathing. She wondered softly if he could feel the warmth that radiated off her bones. If that brought him any comfort.

On those nights, she would wake up with his arm slung over her waist, staring at the star decals, and Sharpied autographs on her son's bedroom wall, and feel like maybe things could almost go back to being normal. Then of course she'd turn around to find Sid's eyes just as open as they ever were, brows tugged up into a look of exhaustion she'd never know.

Some times she'd wondered if he'd be happier dead. Then she wondered is she would be selfless enough to let him have that. Because the truth was no matter what he said or did, she wanted her meister with her. Always. She would always love him.

So she'd offer the paltry comfort she could, reach up, and brush his braided hair behind his ear, and whisper good morning like nothing had changed. She didn't know if that made it better or worse, but she also didn't know how to ask that question.  
They didn't talk about it for months. Things just kept going the way they did, a strange new dance around new, untamed insecurities until she snapped, and slammed the big pewter bowl of pancake mix down on the counter, making it crack against the butcher block top beside the stove.

They were assassins. They slept lightly, and they thought even lighter, and when there was a noise it always grabbed their attention, because they'd lived through too much not to flinch a sound like a gunshot. His eyes were wide when his head whipped around and they trained on her.

"I'm done," she said, and he looked utterly open, and blank, and devastated all at once. She shook her head. "I'm done with this bullshit, Sid. I need you to talk to me, because we've been skirting around the issue too long."

He looked relieved for half a second before his shoulders fell like stones toward his stomach. "I don't know what to say."

"How do you not know what to say?" she asked. "You taught Black Star poetry."

He smiled a bit at the statement, eyes trained on some far off moment in time where a six-year-old Black Star had wrested a microphone from a free styler, and broken him into tiny bits in front of an audience of the man's peers. The moment of fond recollection was dispelled before it had been allowed to fully sink in, though.

Slowly, Sid got up, tired arms pushing a tired body off the couch, and he walked around the counter into the kitchen to wrap his arms around her waist, and hold her. "You're just so beautiful," he said into the crook of her neck. In her hand, the whisk dripped pancake batter on the floor. "How can you stay with someone like me when you're still so alive? How can I make you happy?"

She hit him hard, the handle of the whisk jabbing into the ribs on his back, and flinging uncooked pancake all over the kitchen, and him as he flinched away from her.

"How stupid can you be?" she asked, hitting him again, this time in the chest, her fist falling dead against his pectoral. "How dare you think there is anyone else I would rather be with? I outta throw the whole kitchen at you, because that is the most selfish thing you have ever said to me!"

She wiped at her cheek with the heal of her palm as he stared at her blankly. They rarely ever got physical in a way that could possibly be harmful to the other. The worst that had ever happened was one of them scaring the other into a fit that wound up with them both panting, and wide eyed, trying to fathom what had just happened. He looked lost in the twists and turns of her emotions.

"I love you," she said, wiping at her face harder.

"I'm so-" he started, and she threw the whisk at him. It bounced off his stomach, splattering more batter over the two of them.

"Don't you dare start with that crap! Don't you start feeling guilty for me now, because I swear to god I will put you in the ground again, you hear me?" He nodded. "I'm not leaving you. There's nowhere I'd rather be. I'm here Sid. I'm always gonna be here. I may not be the most romantic person in the world, but it's not like all this time has meant nothing, because it's meant everything. We've been together nineteen years, I ain't giving up on this now."

He bent over, picking up the whisk, and dropping it in the sink.

"We need to shower, and change our clothes," he said, pointing to where the batter had landed in their hair, and on their faces, dripping down into the cotton of their t-shirts. He was grinning softly, apologetically.

She smiled at him, taking his hand, and pulling him toward the bathroom. "That's better she said. "I'm not some delicate flower, and I don't need you tip toeing around me, just remember that."

It was easier after that. Not picture perfect, it never had been, but it was easier after that. They fell at least part of the way back into place. He didn't run away to Black Star's old room anymore. Didn't hide from her. She was okay with that. They could iron out the rough patches as they went along. Like they always had.


End file.
